Week 28, 2021–Issue #160
Introducing mOS v1.0: Platforms, Teams, and Roles
Each week: three ideas on and about the future of work. This week: three ideas on mOS—MAQE’s new organizational operating system.
This has been a long time coming but it’s finally time to unveil MAQE’s new organizational structure and operating system. We’re calling it mOS and I recently had the opportunity to discuss its rational and inner workings with the Rendanheyi (RDHY) community:
mOS is designed for Rendanheyi (RDHY) and (heavily) inspired by Holacracy, Sociocracy, BetaCodex, and others. It’s the org structure and system that we need to be successful in the months, years, and decades ahead:
1. Platforms
mOS is a role-based organizational structure visualized not as a top-down hierarchy but as a series of nested circles (see w252020). Parent circles are called platforms and there are six of them in this first version of the system. Each platform represents a core organizational function that, in some ways, has always been present at MAQE; now codified for the first time. The one exception is the Commerce platform, which is completely new. It’s our first so-called ‘industry platform’ and it’s where our push towards RDHY comes to a head.
2. Teams
There are six types of organizational units in mOS. One per platform. Each one represents an autonomous and self-organized team that differs in terms of size, scope, and makeup, etc. Most are idiosyncratic; never before codified yet already ingrained in organizational lore. Commerce, with its MicroEnterprise (ME) units, is again the sole exception. Like all future industry platforms, it’ll act as a domain-specific venture builder that incubates employee-turned-entrepreneur-owed MEs.
3. Roles
Role-based organizational structures start with the assumption that there’s a one-to-many relationship between individuals and the roles they fulfill. mOS is no different. In fact, mOS assumes most people will have at least three roles… maybe more. There are many such roles to choose from and all come equipped with a so-called A5 role description (see w102020). The end result is an ecosystem allowing individuals to move freely between roles, teams, and platforms.
mOs is “the organizational structure and system that we need to be successful in the months, years, and decades ahead.”
But what does ‘success’ mean in this context?
Two things.
Long-term, success means that MAQE is able to fulfill its organizational purpose “to (literally) change how the world works.”
In the short to mid-term we have chosen a more pragmatic goal; to maximize three separate and sometimes opposing metrics:
- Personal Fulfillment
- Customer Satisfaction
- Company Profitability
It’s all about balance. We cannot be successful by maximizing one metric at the expense of the others. We need all three. And mOS has been designed accordingly.
That’s all for this week.
Until next time: Make it matter.
/Andreas
